Thursday, February 14, 2008

Before we get to the ratings I thought you might like to hear Jon Stewart's take on 'the best political team in television' and The Situation Room. Hilarious as always.

I hope everyone has a Happy Valentine's Day and that your personal cupid meets with a better outcome that this poor fellow. ~ Phebe

LAST WEEK WAS A MIXED BAG IN CABLE NEWS PROGRAMMING BUT CNN STILL RULES WITH PRIMARY COVERAGE

I could be polite, but I won’t when it comes to Bill O’Reilly stirring the pot and gathering high viewership on the back of Veterans issues (can you tell I’m from a family with a long and medaled military legacy..); Bill Maher lets loose with some pretty loud smack downs on LKL, AC360 continues to go after GRETA’s audience even though she was doing her best to wave the coverage of the young man suspected of involvement in the Natalie Holloway disappearance as well as Britney Spear’s latest woes. I guess we can either have a heavy dose of politics, and a little on celeb news or the other way around. You Decide…..

I already reported on Super Tuesday’s performance last week, well, because I was reporting on the week prior just as the overnight ratings came out along with the cable program rankings, so I thought I might as well give you the good news in the same week.

Courtesy: CNN; Super Tuesday

Just to re-iterate, CNN peaked at 11PM EST (!) with Total Audience 2+ tuning into Super Tuesday coverage with 4,021,000! Not much different from their 10PM average of 3,858,000 or their 9M average of 3,851,000. This audience delivery was far and away the strongest between them, Fox News and MSNBC for the night. Just so you know, yes, Adults 25-54 – the news key demographic also was taken by CNN with large margins.

The rest of the week:

8PM:Fox News: 551,000*CNN: 276,000*+MSNBC: 382,000*

No surprises here with Billo taking the time period. CNN with its varied programming in the 8PM is a little tricky to program with FOX and MSNBC being stable with their programming.

9PM:Fox News: 558,000*CNN: 420,000*MSNBC: 161,000**

LKL was up substantially this week over previous weeks (particularly with Monday’s Bill Maher appearance), but not enough to catch politics filled HANNITY & COLMES (I’m sorry, I can still picture the video on YouTube of Hannity being chased back to his hotel in NH by Ron Paul supporters – a little snarky humor here – by people who want to vote for Ron Paul, not actual “supporters” – if you know what I mean)…I know, I also digress to the WEST WING episode where Jimmy Smits playing Congressman Matt Santos has to autograph a “supporter” in Texas. It is a little weird how this series is almost mimicking this election cycle episode by episode. Is Aaron Sorkin on the campaign trail? We know Lawrence O’ Donnell is! Oh yeah, once again, Dan Abrams takes the “bronze.”

10PM:Fox News: 440,000*CNN: 368,000*MSNBC: 183,000*

In all time periods, just about every host or anchor bailed on Thursday or Friday night. They all knew most of them would be working on Saturday (us too!), but GRETA hung in there for the week. Again, she had a fair amount of sensational stories on Monday and Wednesday, having a boosting affect for her in the time period. The Super Tuesday primary was not coded an AC360, so we can’t count it in the four day average. MSNBC’s “docbloc” really lagged with the interest in celeb news on Fox and politics on CNN.Courtesy: CNN

No denying the above statement. Even the Total Audience 2+ went in CNN’s favor. With Missouri, Washington State and other states up for grabs, over a half million viewers on a Saturday night is nothing to sneeze at! But I’m not going to say “the phrase that shall not be named” or call viewers/voters “Peeps.” Yikes…

Yes, we know Maine was active on Sunday, but there was nothing really substantial to report because the news was over so quickly in the early evening, CNN led all channels, but the audience for them was under 350,000 and well under that for the others.

We also had great Cable Program Rankings again this week. Unbelievable as it may seem, yes, Wrestling on USA Network took the top two slots, but CNN with its Super Tuesday primary coverage took the #4, #6 and #7 rankings out of the Top 20 programs. Fox News had one program in the Top 10 and MSNBC had none.

More primaries and more debates, so stay tuned. See you next week!RATING GURU

*4 day average; primary coverage on Tuesday.**Dan Abrams – 3 night average only; did not air Tuesday or Friday.+ Mixed programs of storm special/Lou Dobbs/Election Central but no primary coverage used.

Hey guys you all might want to take a look atTV BY THE NUMBERS. There is some awesomenews about CNN with regards to ratings. forFEb 4-10. CNN was the top-rated cable newsnetwork for the week and the # 3 cable networkfor the entire week.

Oh I forgot. If this keeps up, it is possible thatCNN will be the top-rated cable news networkfor the Feb month. Thus breaking the FNCstreak they love to put out press releasesabout. The next 2 week should be interesting.

Dear All - We're pretty careful about rankings and other sites putting out numbers. We take into consideration different types of news/information formats in laying out our ratings analysis.

I've actually had to correct TV By The Numbers with their interpretations and also how they have stated cable ratings in comparison to broadcast.

When CNN is ranked by program in the Top 20 for the week, we definitely mention it as well as when it is the top rated in accepted industry programming blocks or time periods.Many times channels are ranked outside of accepted industry time periods, so we don't publish those. Thanks for your interest though. And you are right - CNN is on a roll and we have been pointing this out for the last three weeks.

Campbell Brown was one of the Election Center anchors in last Saturday's (9th) primary coverage that ranked #1. CNN is slowly integrating her into the coverage since just prior to Super Tuesday.RATINGS GURU